In recent years, “urban fantasy” has come to describe a subgenre of stories in which supernatural beings engage in clandestine battles that bring a violent edge to modern city nightlife. Vampires, werewolves, fairies and witches almost never get along with each other, which makes their romantic entanglements all the more dramatic.

Helene Wecker’s debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni, isn’t an urban fantasy in that sense. It’s a straightforward fantasy novel that introduces Jewish and Arab folklore into one of American pop culture’s archetypal urban settings: Manhattan in the early 20th century.

The story starts with Otto Rotfeld, a furniture maker in a town near Danzig, who wants a wife but lacks the looks or the personality. He seeks out a Jewish mystic, Yehudah Schaalman, and pays him to create a golem. But instead of a simple humanoid figure made of clay, he wants one that can pass as a real woman, and not just in appearance: “Give her curiosity. And intelligence,” he instructs Schaalman. “Oh, and make her proper. … A gentleman’s wife.”

Schaalman’s creation is vividly lifelike — but then Otto dies on the New York-bound ship shortly after activating her, leaving her at loose ends in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Fortunately, she’s spotted by a sympathetic rabbi, who does his best to help her blend in with the local community.

Meanwhile, a few neighborhoods over, a Lebanese tinsmith starts to smooth out elaborate markings from an old flask. There’s a loud burst, and suddenly a naked man — an iron cuff tight around his wrist — appears in the middle of the workshop. It turns out to be a jinni (genie), trapped in the bottle roughly 1,000 years ago by an evil wizard.

Wecker doesn’t bring her two stars together right away. Instead, she allows them to linger in their respective corners — well, the Golem lingers, having taken a job in a bakery where she can fulfill her persistent urge to satisfy people’s desires. The Jinni savors his new freedom, traveling up and down the length of Manhattan. When the pair do finally meet, then, their conflicting personalities have been firmly established. They don’t quite get along, but they’re the only two people in New York City remotely like each other, so they come to find each other’s company welcome.

Wecker loads the novel with a variety of supporting characters, from the rabbi’s nephew, who runs a shelter for newly arrived immigrants, to a young society woman the Jinni encounters in Central Park. Sometimes, these side stories can be mildly annoying; Wecker will pick up a thread, play with it for a bit, then set it aside for several chapters. She’s playing the long game, though, and this is clearly apparent in the intermittent passages where she recounts the Jinni’s life in ancient Syria. Once you realize she’s building up to the revelation of how he ended up imprisoned in that flask, you can settle in for the ride.

Some might find that Wecker ties all her threads too neatly in the final act, particularly the way in which she links the Golem and Jinni through their back stories. One of the joys of the novel, after all, is in watching two strangers develop a relationship that, while it’s rooted in their shared magical natures, echoes the way ordinary humans can form bonds starting with a random encounter on a busy street. Yet it’s hard to begrudge Wecker the obvious affection she feels for every aspect of the world she’s created — and easy enough to linger with her as she fits it all together.

Ron Hogan (@RonHogan on Twitter) is the host of TheHandsell.com, a new Web series providing readers with individualized recommendations.